Intel’s next generation
Sledgehammer70
California Icrontian
Intel has been working very hard to trounce the life out of the AMD Athlon architecture, and over the past 9 months it has done just that. With Intel’s 65nm processors pushing upward of a 30% performance increase over AMD, one has to wonder if AMD can make a comeback with its industry named K8L architecture. We know one thing: Intel is not going to make it easy.
Before the end of 2007, Intel is setup to push out its new 45nm Hi-k process technology. Hi-k stands for hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors. With Intel’s steps forward with a 45nm shrink, not only will they be able to make even more power efficient CPUs, but cooler running ones, which will benefit the entire industry.
The new 45nm technology dubbed "Penryn" will come in dual and quad core designs, sporting a massive 820 million transistors per core. It will be contained in a package that is a quarter the size of a U.S. postage stamp, which is about 107mm2. Intel plans on having 15 different chips under the Penryn release and is sure that the 45nm release will close the gap AMD is advertising with its new Barcelona 65nm chip.
Intel’s Penryn is not just the average new processor to hit the market. Intel has been slaving away at many new improvements over the current Core 2 Duo architecture and is driving performance per watt into the sky.
Mobile technology will benefit greatly from Intel’s new Penryn because Intel has built in what they are calling Deep Power Down, which will significantly reduce the power of the processor during idle periods. This helps extend battery life in laptops. Along with the Deep Power Down, Intel has increased L2 cache sizes allowing dual cores to come equipped with 6MB L2 cache and quad cores to come with 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. It also looks like the Penryn will kick off the GHz race once again as chips will be shipped with 3GHz stock clock speeds.
Overall, Intel is poised high on their horse and AMD hasn’t done much to dismount them. With Intel’s push to further technology to 45nm (and even 32nm) processes we can assume we will have a generation of faster and more efficient CPUs very soon.
Before the end of 2007, Intel is setup to push out its new 45nm Hi-k process technology. Hi-k stands for hafnium-based high-K + metal gate transistor design, which results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors. With Intel’s steps forward with a 45nm shrink, not only will they be able to make even more power efficient CPUs, but cooler running ones, which will benefit the entire industry.
The new 45nm technology dubbed "Penryn" will come in dual and quad core designs, sporting a massive 820 million transistors per core. It will be contained in a package that is a quarter the size of a U.S. postage stamp, which is about 107mm2. Intel plans on having 15 different chips under the Penryn release and is sure that the 45nm release will close the gap AMD is advertising with its new Barcelona 65nm chip.
Intel’s Penryn is not just the average new processor to hit the market. Intel has been slaving away at many new improvements over the current Core 2 Duo architecture and is driving performance per watt into the sky.
Mobile technology will benefit greatly from Intel’s new Penryn because Intel has built in what they are calling Deep Power Down, which will significantly reduce the power of the processor during idle periods. This helps extend battery life in laptops. Along with the Deep Power Down, Intel has increased L2 cache sizes allowing dual cores to come equipped with 6MB L2 cache and quad cores to come with 12MB L2 cache. Cache is a memory reservoir where frequently accessed data can be stored for more rapid access. It also looks like the Penryn will kick off the GHz race once again as chips will be shipped with 3GHz stock clock speeds.
Overall, Intel is poised high on their horse and AMD hasn’t done much to dismount them. With Intel’s push to further technology to 45nm (and even 32nm) processes we can assume we will have a generation of faster and more efficient CPUs very soon.
0
Comments
1) AMD needs, really needs a rabbit to pull out of a hat.
2) I think Barcelona will be excellent, but based on AMD's lack of PR excitement, I'm thinking the Barcelona will merely bring AMD closer to standing level with Intel, but will not position AMD as a performance leader.
3) AMD may have another couple years ahead where they have to sacrifice price for volume. Unfortunately, I just don't see them having the margins for the R&D necessary to meet Intel head on.
I hope I'm wrong.
The earnings announcement is close, we will see their market share
No, not because of ATI's video card business, but because of the chipsets, discrete graphics chips, and integrated platforms that may result from the pooled technology of the two companies.
OEMs love all-in-one solutions. It keeps their R&D budgets down and greatly simplifies their supply chain operations. Look at the runaway success of Intel's Centrino platform. Within just one year of it's availability to the branded computer manufacturers, Centrino was found in every major manufacturers' laptops. AMD has a good chance of becoming a platform solutions provider.
What i love from AMD is their low price/performance rate (well, they have been going down on that rate recently but they're still cheaper than what Intel was offering)
What i want is clearly a never-ending war : one compagny comes up then goes down and so on... This kind of war has keep thing in evolution at a pace i've never seen before, and that's good, for us, customers.
Now it seems like it will be Intel in the near futur but AMD might as well come back sooner than we could think they would... Well i hope so, cuz if any of those compagny go out of the competition for a long while, it will be very very BAD for us, and for the industry.
My .02
If they can get their DX10 solution out the door. However, being mostly an ATI user, I agree and generally find their products better thought out and more robust.
While Barcelona may gain the performance crown for a while, Intel may short-sheet AMD here with big price slashings on their own quads (by coincidence ... of course?).
Here are two recent links about AMD's loss of market share.
AMD may have lost almost one third of its market share in Q1, says iSuppli
Analysis: AMD loses dominance in U.S. retail channel to Intel
AMD's earnings announcement is on Thursday. I am afraid it will be close to a disaster.
AMD had estimated losing USD 250 Million. Over twice that, it turns out. Wow. This is not good.
I will say having 2 companies is better than 1 for us consumers....
...having said that, the stuff I'm now reading (both historical and current info) I 'm a little confused at what AMD was trying to do a year or so ago..
We know AMD had the fastest proc on the market for quite a while. And when Intel's NetBurst ideas flopped AMD became a bit greedy with their price structure, thinking that Intel was in trouble... Incedently: NetBurst was a precursor to Core Duo.....
..it also appears that they kind of let their R&D peeps go into cruise control mode, only coming out with minor changes to their latest chips, while still keeping the prices rather high... Then they got caught with their pants down when Intel dropped their Dual and Quad core procs into the mix which lead to AMD's current state...
Am I off track with any of this thinking, again, I never really paid attention to all this before...
Yeah, sounds pretty much like the condensed version in a nutshell, RADA. I hope they can pull a rabbit out of their hat or someone with really deep pockets can bankroll them so we can keep 2 processor manufacturers around.
AMD/ATI has the potential for capital accumulation and revived R&D through their chipset and graphics programs. I hope they innovate so well that their products command good prices and they can resume pumping money into CPU R&D.
But... that's the only good thing about that thread, everything else makes me fear for us, customers. I don't think AMD will go down very fast but in the medium/long run they'll really need something new and competitive, or they'll bite the dust :sad2:
One more thing, if you look at the patents you will see AMD has played a game where intel introduces new technologies, like dual channel etc, and then AMD has came behind them and perfected it. I have to give them credit in the 64bit area, they made it happen.
I think AMD will take a small lead for a short while in the coming year. Then it'll be 2 or more years of Intel leading and AMD will come back hard and take the crown for a couple more years.
AMD is suffering from sloth.
I think this is AMD basically being overwhelmed with many changes and trying to figure out how best to deal with it all. But they should get some newer innovation out the door soon or ....
Yup.
Yup (x2)
But....maybe that upgrade will be to AMD. AMD has stated that Barcelona is up to 50% faster than Xeon Cloverton...at today's performance level. This ought to be very interesting!